Trapped on the Bus

Transportation was the first thing that I ran into that was clearly and dangerously broken in our special education journey.

I was a stay-at-home dad when my son started special education with Special Day Class (SDC – a totally segregated class though I didn’t understand what that meant) preschool just after he turned three.

Being a good responsible stay-at-home that I drove him to school every day. One of the gifts of that time was I got to meet some really amazing special ed moms and start learning stuff that kind of became the inspiration for disabilityalmanac.com.

The thing that struck me almost immediately was being wrong how the transportation system worked. Now there were a lot of problems and I didn’t even see at the time… but we would get to school 15–20 minutes early and a bunch of our sped kids would all hang out and play outside the school gate …waiting to be marched in the class when the bell rang and the teachers and aides appeared.

I would talk to the other parents, but the school bus for the special ed kids would pull up sometimes close to the same time I arrived.

And it just sit there.

.. all the special ed kids on that bus would sit on that bus for 15 or 20 minutes watching our kids play right in front of them on the playground.

And they’d see all the general education kids playing on the playground.

(the general ed kids got let off the bus immediately, of course)

I vowed that my son would NEVER use special education transporation.

This happened in my first school and my second school and my third school until we moved.

What If I Hadn’t Been There?

It really made me sad and angry because I was offered “special education transportation”

…and if I had taken it and never came to take my son to school,

…I wouldn’t have seen that he was sitting in the bus,

… not playing or doing anything for 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes

… after being on the bus for who knows how long.

The first year they officially offered transportation to us it was going to be an hour in the bus for our four-year-old.

… plus sitting, waiting at school to get off the bus.

We were lucky.

We had the choice and the option to drive my son every day.

I know a lot of parents who can’t do this. They have to work.

Segregation by Bussing

General education kids get sent to their nearest school as a default. Not so for special education kids. There is no cost or consequence for the school district. In fact, they can use state and federal special education dollars to pay for transportation.

In my first school district, the number was 25% of their special education budget.

25%

(My current school district doesn’t break out their special education budget which is quite frustrating… there are always problems with dissecting special education budgets… another article sometime).

I don’t know about you.

But, I see very little educational value in transportation.

So, instead of transportation making better education accessible, it was a tool of further segregation.

ACTION: End Special Education Funding for Special Education Transportation

Schools should absolutely be required to pay for special education transportation, but they need to be explicitly excluded from using any state or federal or other education dollars for providing that transportation. I can’t think of an easier way to stop the use of special education dollars to segregate education for disabled learners.

Six Schools Away

Our first two schools were about six schools away from our house. Any one of which my son could have been assigned to. We were never offered our nearest local school, which had or should’ve had all the programs that we needed. We actually had two elementary schools that were in walking, easy walking or walking distance from our house.

The last school that we were sent to in that school district was actually the furthest school in the entire school district from our house!

It didn’t matter.

There was NO WAY we were EVER going to put our son on one of those buses.

The Privilege of Presence

On a personal note—and this is a matter of substantial privilege—there was nothing like taking my son to school every day.

I got to see what was going on before school and during school.
All the informal conversations I had with the teachers and the principals and all the other people at the school were invaluable.
I was able to build rapport and affirmative support informally for my son’s education.
and it gave me a real clear indicator of when things were going wrong—and they went wrong a couple times.

Losing Critical Insight and Connection

Without all that raw time and observation I don’t know what I would have missed. And I am extremely concerned as I move from elementary to middle school where the opportunities and ability to observe what goes on in the classroom gets harder and harder.

Trapped on the Bus – Inside Special Education Transportation